MATTHEWS ASIA
Content and brand campaign for global investors
Matthews Asia is a leading investment firm based in the U.S. and solely focused on Asian markets. The goal of the campaign was to raise brand awareness among investors in Europe and Asia.
CONTEXT
– How might we introduce Matthews Asia as a thought leader and investment expert in Asian markets?
– How might we amplify that message among key target audiences?
CHALLENGE
OUTCOME
This content-led campaign used key insights drawn from the client's reports and white papers, which we formatted that into a series of shareable artefacts that generated brand engagement, and raised MA profile in the target markets.
PROJECT overview
In their campaigns, active investing firms like to claim they bring unique perspectives, insight, and superior knowledge over their competitors. The jargon too tends to be identical in most cases. Matthews Asia, on the other hand, provided us with a great opportunity to break with that formula.
The investment firm holds an undeniably strong and unique position in the Asian market, following 24 years of investing experience in the region. But how could we communicate that without defaulting to the well-worn clichés used in the industry?
Concept
We adopted the mindset of a new incumbent and concluded that instead of just saying what Matthews Asia was exceptional at, we would give an actual taste of it. The firm's strategy is guided by 'boots on the ground'. Experts are constantly researching companies to invest in and analysing the region's markets way ahead of any opportunity horizon. This pool of knowledge is also transformed into regular reports and white papers, some of which are shared with potential investors.
We looked into many of these reports in detail and tried to identify insights that could be turned into appealing narratives. The final result was a concept based on three different storylines: the rise of the middle-class in India and its correlation with sharp increases in expenditure on healthcare and lifestyle products; the widespread automation across small and medium enterprises in China and its impact on productivity and incomes; and, finally, the dramatic mobile e-commerce boom in Malaysia. Those stories were turned into 'hand-framed' scenes in a first person perspective that represented Matthews Asia viewpoint.
Digital strategy
It was against this background that we crafted a range of content pieces in both short and long form, comprising video interviews with specialists; an online content hub; infographics that turned into social media cards; and, of course, a multi-channel campaign to sustain activity.
Art-direction and production
With a limited budget available we had to craft the storyline scenes using a composition that combined off-the-shelf stock photos with original content shot for the campaign under my art direction. The composition also had to be editable for use on different formats in both digital and print channels.
The final suite of assets comprised print ads in English, German and Chinese for publications in the UK, EU and Asia; animated programmatic banner ads; video interviews; infographics; content hub and more.
Conclusion
The campaign launch was a success, exceeding the client's benchmarks on CRTs, dwell-time on the content hub and videos, digital ad impressions, number of social shares and report downloads. You can see more for yourself here.
Client Matthews Asia
Agency Mohawk HQ
Creative Direction Vilmar Pellisson, Ken Muir, Simon Crosbie
Concept Vilmar Pellisson
Copywriting Ken Muir
TTL Art direction Vilmar Pellisson
Infographics Vilmar Pellisson, Andrea Ferrara
Digital strategy Mark Doyle
Digital design Dave Rendle, Tom Swaby